A view from India 2: Cupitt, Comblin and (relatively) common experience

In Taking leave of God Cupitt argues for a kind of ‘Christian Buddhism’ in which there are some Christian practices (such as praying, contemplating, feeling grateful, feeling awe) but a Buddhist-esque lack of metaphysical commitments. So God is not a being of any sort but a myth, a symbol, a goad to the religious quest. I have to confess to only skimming but I don’t think Cuppit mentions social justice, nor really says what prayer and contemplation would be without a being to pray to/in or contemplate or be grateful to, etc.

It now seems outdated by the post-secular turn (it was written in 1981). But it’s not his approach to proofs for God’s existence I want to engage. Instead, compare him with José Comblin’s The Holy Spirit and Liberation. Comblin talks about the base communities in Latin America experiencing the Holy Spirit as “an experience worked out in action;” “joy in the midst of these persecutions;” giving “superhuman energy to tackle superhuman tasks;” as well as more emotional manifestations (pp.1-6). With regard to joy in the midst of suffering, he says: “I would not dare to talk of the Spirit today unless this had been my experience in daily life.”

Here I think we can see there is a side of Christianity that Cupitt hasn’t experienced, or certainly hasn’t integrated into his thinking. The struggle for justice and the idea and feeling that one is working with God in doing so, in the very real sense that sometimes things happen that are God’s actions, not a person’s. Comblin says, “Sure discernment and perception of the workings of the Spirit are possible only to those who experience participation in the Spirit” (60).

This should also be compared to my friends in India I was talking to today. Both have worked in rural villages with animist people who sometimes experience demon possession as a result of being cursed. My friends have been involved in praying for exorcisms and healings for some of these people, and, perhaps not surprisingly, this tends to interest them in Christianity, and churches often result. Such activities have a long tradition in Judaism and Christianity (c.f. Lk 9.1ff and all of church history to mention just the latter). As I posted earlier, such evidence doesn’t play much part in Western theology and one striking example of the problems it leads to is the washed out, apolitical, apractical work of Taking leave of God.

Is theology ignoring evidence?

In academic theology there are certain types of discussion and certain types of evidence that are very rarely, if ever, discussed. One such area is the angelic and demonic, the realm of exorcism, and miracles. There are certain notable theologians who profess to believe in the angelic yet, to my knowledge, don’t write about it much; for instance, Rowan Williams and John Milbank.

Why should these aspects of the Christian religion be ignored? My main guess would be the disenchantment of the world along with the rise of science in the modern period, resulting in a disbelief in the supernatural. This only applies to certain parts of the world and only in certain sections of society. Travel to Asia or Africa and there are different beliefs. Even talking to people in Britain you find a continuing belief in some supernatural (witness the interest in ghost programmes, wicca, angels, attitudes to the dead). My main interest, though, is not in how such a situation arose but in how academic theology should address these issues.

In the past, the church held quite firmly to these beliefs. One of the roles in the church alongside priests, deacons and bishops was the exorcist. Baptismal liturgies today still retain reference to renouncing the works of satan. Much activity was attributed to demons (possibly too much). There still is a belief in Eastern Orthodoxy that icons can perform miracles. There is the notion in the tradition of holy places: “Christian churches were holy on account of the prayer, thanksgiving, and sacrifice that were offered up in them.” (Jaroslav Pelikan, The Spirit of Eastern Christendom, 112). The Christian scriptures also testify to miracles, angels, unclean spirits and exorcisms. All of Chrtiainity is based on the resurrection, which is arguable even more strange than the rest of it. So, unless we take the demythologizing route of Bultmann et al, this kind of thing is really quite prominent in the tradition. And witness to such things continues today. There are lots of stories of miraculous healings, from sources diverse as the charismatic movement to Lourdes, from Orthodoxy to officially sanctioned Catholic stories (stigmata, miracles, visions, all of which are thoroughly investigated by the church), from evangelicals too. And these stories come from the west and the rest of the world.

So why is this evidence ignored? Imagine being at a conference and someone giving a paper in which they started telling stories about they or members of their church who cast out demons, or saw some angels or saw someone healed through prayer. My guess is most people would be embarrassed. But this means there’s a very significant element of the tradition, and God, that is being ignored, and this situation can only distort our picture of both. Ignoring evidence is also bad academic work. Is it a fear of crazy people and wild stories that cannot be checked? There’s no reason to uncritically accept people’s interpretation of their own experience. The church didn’t’ really do that until perhaps recently when ‘experience’ became something of a conversation stopper. The whole point of spiritual directors and confessors (which goes back at least to the Desert Fathers and Mothers, though under a different name) is that you don’t necessarily understand your own experience and it needs to be compared with the communal experience of the church at large.

If we didn’t ignore this evidence, how would it figure in academic debate? It could be studied in its own sake, as anthropologists study different beliefs. It could perhaps be used as empirical evidence for some theological claims. For instance, belief in angels, miracles, etc, belief in a divine agent that acts within the world, etc. This touches on the issue of what theological language refers to and how it can be verified or falsified (see earlier post on baptismal theology), etc. Theology isn’t science, it doesn’t have to be empirically tested in the same way, it can’t be a lot of the time. But here are some real world events that are very difficult to explain without the theological explanation usually given (e.g. during exorcisms when furniture moves without being touched).

Thoughts?